Margaret, it is sad to relate, was much less concerned about the two
men who were in love with her than is considered becoming in a woman of
heart. She confessed to herself, without excess of penitence, that she
had flirted abominably with them both, she consoled her conscience with
the reflection that they were both alive and apparently very well, and
she put all her strength, which was great, into preparing for her
début.
Men never love so energetically and persuasively as when they are
fighting every day for life, honour or fame, and are already on the
road to victory; but a woman's passion, though true and lasting, may be
momentarily quite overshadowed by the anticipation of a new hat or of a
social battle of uncertain issue. How much more, then, by the near
approach of such an event as a first appearance on the stage!
Logotheti bribed the doorkeeper at the small theatre where Margaret was
rehearsing. Whenever there was a rehearsal he was there before her,
quite out of sight in the back of a lower box, and he did not go away
until he was quite sure that she had left. He knew women well enough to
be certain that if anything could make Margaret wish to see him it
would be his own strict observance of her request not to show himself;
and in the meantime he enjoyed some moments of keen delight in watching
her and listening to her. He felt something of the selfish pleasure
which filled that King of Bavaria who had a performance of Lohengrin
given for himself alone. But the pleasure was not unmixed, nor was the
delight unclouded.
Even Schreiermeyer had given up coming to the rehearsals, for he was
now sure of Margaret's success and had passed on to other business. In
the dim stalls there appeared only the shabby relations and rather
gorgeous friends of the other members of the company. There was the
young painter who loved the leading girl of the chorus, there was the
wholesale upholsterer who admired the contralto, and a little apart
there was the middle-aged great lady who entertained a romantic and
expensive passion for the tenor. The tenor was a young Italian, who was
something between a third-rate poet and a spoilt child when he was in
love and was as cynical as Macchiavelli when he was not, which was the
case at present, at least so far as the middle-aged woman of the world
was concerned.
His friends could always tell the state of his
affections by the way he sang in Rigoletto. When he was hopelessly in
love himself, he sang 'La donna è mobile' with tears in his voice, as
if his heart were breaking; when, on the contrary, he knew that some
unhappy female was hopelessly in love with him, he sang it with a sort
of laugh that was diabolically irritating. At the present time he
seemed to be in an intermediate state, for he sometimes sang it in the
one way and sometimes in the other, to the despair of the poor foolish
lady in the stalls. The truth was that at irregular intervals he felt
that he was in love with Margaret.